REMEMBER Philip Hammond’s words on his first day as transport secretary in 2010: “We will end the war on the motorist”?

Like Berwick-upon-Tweed, which due to an administrative oversight was allegedly still fighting the Crimean War with Russia until the 1960s, he must have forgotten to sign the peace treaty.

In a survey for the RAC yesterday two-thirds of motorists said that parking spaces in their towns had been reduced or that they were now paying for parking in places which were until recently free.

The Local Government Association rejected the RAC’s request that councils be more open about how parking revenues are being spent.

Meanwhile try telling the recipients of the nine million parking fines issued by councils last year that hostilities have ceased. Or the many more motorists who have been sent parking-charge notices by private companies to whom the DVLA sold their names and addresses.

Try telling it to Joyce Sale who was fined £70 for pulling up for seven seconds while looking for a parking place in Birmingham. Try telling it to Daniel Wiggins who was fined by Kingston council for pulling into an empty bus lane to let through four police motorbikes. Or to Victor Hawkins who was fined £70 for stopping in Bradford – at red lights.

Every so often Communities Secretary Eric Pickles barks at councils for ripping off motorists but the fleecing goes on. Councils are theoretically banned from using parking and traffic fines as a means of raising revenue yet they are doing so brazenly.

Kingston-upon-Thames council, which fined Daniel Wiggins, raised £890,000 in a year from bus-lane and box junction cameras.

Hammersmith and Fulham council made £2.7million in one year from a single box junction where motorists can’t avoid being trapped. A leaked email gave the game away with one council worker congratulating the others on the number of fines issued with the words: “Another record month, guys. Well done.”

In a survey for the RAC yesterday two-thirds of motorists said that parking spaces in their towns had been reduced or that they were now paying for parking in places which were until recently free

Other councils have been caught out using incentive schemes for traffic wardens to hand out as many fines as they possibly can.

Under rules introduced by the coalition, councils must hold a referendum if they want to increase council tax – a referendum they know they would never win. Rather than do the obvious – rein-in their expenditure by slashing the bloated salaries and pensions of their senior staff – they have taken to using revenue from fines to try to make up the difference.

We don’t want a parking free- for-all but overzealous parking enforcement inspired by the chance to raise revenue is killing off high streets and making life impossible for tradesmen who need to park outside the premises where they are working. Tradesmen are forced to employ “van-sitters” to sit in their vans all day in order to watch out for traffic wardens.

Trying to raise revenue from parking charges is counter-productive. No one wins if it drives away custom from the high street so that you end up with bankrupt businesses unable to pay their business rates. But it isn’t just councils. Private businesses, too, are in on the act.

One thing the Government has done is to ban clamping of vehicles on private land yet the regime that has replaced it is arguably even worse. Parking companies are now allowed to pursue motorists for parking charges through the courts.

The DVLA co-operates by selling our names and addresses to parking firms. Cowboy clampers haven’t gone away, they have just taken to issuing tickets or photographing our vehicles instead. They then send out parking-charge notices, which are really invoices but which ape the penalty- charge notices issued by police.

A parking-charge notice is not a fine and cannot be pursued through the criminal courts, only through civil courts like any other unpaid bill.

If these cases did get to court the parking cowboys wouldn’t win. Courts will only allow debtors to be pursued for reasonable charges, which a £200 bill for a few minutes’ parking clearly is not. But it doesn’t matter to the cowboys as they just rely on a certain percentage of their victims taking fright and paying up.

If I ever receive one of these parking-charge notices I will write back to them and tell them that I am introducing a “communications-handling charge” and that if they want to contact me again they will be agreeing to pay me £500 for every letter, email, phone call or visit they make to my address. Such a charge will have no less legal status than the parking fines they hand out.

We have heard enough rhetoric from the Government about ending the war on the motorist. It is time ministers took some real action. We need investigations and prosecutions of councils which have been found to be breaking the rules.

In 2012/13 nearly 50 per cent of appeals made against parking fines were upheld by the parking and traffic appeals service. It is time that councils, ministers and other authorities stopped treating motorists as the enemy and instead treated them as what they are: generally law-abiding citizens who sometimes need to park their vehicles as they go about their daily business – without being set upon with fines.